Connect

Kerry Rowett, the Client Liaison Officer for Connect (formerly the Education Channel) has kindly agreed to be interviewed by the School Library Association of Victoria’s  Bright Ideas blog.

  1. Who is behind the fantastic new Connect websites?

The Connect sites are an evolution of the Victorian Education Channel and are funded by DEECD. Different areas of the Department worked together to create the sites with representatives from Communications, Information Technologies Division and Student Learning. A small team of four educators in eLearning are responsible for the QA process, ongoing improvements to the sites, content creation, Cybersafety education and professional learning. Connect is managed by Sandy Phillips. The sites were designed by an external company – Amnesia.

Connect Primary

Connect Primary

    2.  Why were the websites redeveloped – what do you want to achieve with them?

First created in 2001, the sites were long overdue for a ‘makeover’. Our focus during the redevelopment was to better highlight a high quality range of online resources for use in education. The pages have been developed to improve the user experience. Each page has a larger number of direct links to rich, interactive websites. Topic clouds on the teacher, primary and secondary pages each link to six quality sites whilst the topics page includes a wide range of topics now organised by VELS headings. Sites can be featured more readily (in a more visual form) and can be frequently updated with greater ease.

     3.  How do you see the websites being used in schools? – Primary – Secondary?

Schools use Connect in different ways. Anyone anywhere in the world can view and search Connect. However only Victorian Government and Catholic schools can choose to lock students down to sites only available in Connect. There are a number of options:

  • Many schools choose to have Connect Primary or Secondary as their Internet home page. Students can also search for sites not in Connect
  • Some classes search within Connect only and some classes search beyond Connect with general filtered access
  • Students use Connect when they are trying to maintain their download budget. Students may have an Internet ‘account’ but still have access to Connect resources when this reaches ‘0′
  • All students are ‘Connect only’ and search within Connect for safety and /or cost saving reasons.
Connect Secondary

Connect Secondary

     4.  What kind of input did you have from classroom teachers?

When we received the initial designs for the new Connect sites we visited both primary and secondary schools to seek feedback from teachers and students. This feedback was then provided to the designers. Subsequent designs were also shared with teachers for feedback. Our focus throughout was on making it easier for teachers and students to access high quality online resources for teaching and learning.

The Victorian Education Channel and now Connect have always responded to teacher feedback with most sites available in the spaces included due to teacher and student recommendations. Staff members frequently present at conferences and alter the sites in response to feedback regarding suggested websites, topics, useability and design considerations.

     5.  What type of content do you have on the sites?

Connect features a wide range of online content. Users can search the sites for websites, images, audio and videos. Resources are tagged according to audience – so a search in the primary and secondary pages will get different results. There is also a range of ‘how to’ information about new technologies including blogs, wikis, podcasting and social networking. You can link to schools with great online content such as Horsham West (Vic), Copacabana (NSW), Hawkesdale (Vic) and Woodlands (UK). Useful organisations such as VCAA, VIT and Subject Associations are also only a click away.

Connect Teacher

Connect Teacher

 So whether you want to play a Maths game from the BBC , drag and drop words to construct a poem at Pic Lits, create an online mind map at Mindmeister, make a movie with the Zimmer Twins, write a book review at the State Library ‘Inside a Dog‘ site or watch a Science video from the Futures Channel … you can find it in Connect. Websites are added to the sites daily. Click on ‘suggest a website’  to make your own recommendations.

Thanks to Kerry for her detailed and interesting answers. The Connect sites look fantastic and there is certainly something for everyone! Congratulations to everyone involved.

Bushfire update

From the ALIA blog comes the following news:

Australian library industry appoints central Disaster Recovery Support position

At a meeting in Melbourne on Friday 20th February 2009 library professionals and supporters agreed to fund and appoint a disaster recovery support role to coordinate their efforts. The meeting was organised by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and held at the State Library of Victoria. It  focused on immediate actions to assist bushfire-affected communities, as well as in the medium to longer term. 

Representatives were present from public libraries in the bushfire region, the Public Libraries Victoria Network, the State Library of Victoria, school libraries and school library associations, the Victorian Government, and the book industry.

It was agreed to call on all Australian libraries and library organisations to support and contribute to funding the position of ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager.  Many people in libraries and the book industry wish to provide relevant support for bushfire victims, and coordination of this swell of support from the national library association was seen as the most effective response we could make.

There was a hope expressed that lessons learned from the new position, which will focus on Victorian bushfire relief, will help libraries manage similar responses in the future and to create a model for future crisis management.

“Library staff are generous, but we are also practical, and want to make sure that donations and support from our industry are coordinated and distributed at the right time and to meet real needs.  We also want to work with the book industry to get a more coordinated effort going.”  – Derek Whitehead, ALIA President.

“The library industry has always been a supportive and collaborative one – especially in times of hardship.   This ALIA position will enable our industry and profession to develop models for future coordinated support when a disaster strikes.  We have already offered support from Public Libraries Victoria Network and many public library services.” – John Murrell, PLVN President.

Jane Grace, currently Outreach Manager for Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service, will take up the acting position of ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager immediately to ensure appropriate support is provided to bushfire families and the wider communities.  Ms Grace will also be working with Queensland colleagues on needs and requirements for flood affected areas.

 “I am very pleased to be able to take up this interim position to co-ordinate immediate support and future models and information tools to assist communities get back on track.  People are often well-meaning, but getting the needs and requirements right for the people on the ground is our aim.  Libraries really are providing an amazing service in these difficult times and making a difference in people’s lives.”  – Jane Grace, Acting ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager.

Calls for applicants for the ongoing position of ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager will be conducted in the coming weeks with more information available at http://www.alia.org.au/employment

We would like to thank everyone in the library community who have been in contact with PLVN, SLV and ALIA and the library and book trade organisations offering support.  Please keep checking the ALIA website for further information in the coming days and weeks.

Libraries are at the very heart of our communities. By working together with local people and organisations, we can make a significant contribution to rebuilding those communities and the lives of those affected.

Australian Library and Information Association:  Derek Whitehead, President, 03 9214 8333 

Public Libraries Victoria Network: John Murrell, President, 03 5622 2849 or 0409 016 701  

Other contacts: Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director, 02 6215 8215 or 0412 764 922 

Snap

Snap is a tool that can be used if you have a blog, wiki or other webpage. Snap takes your links and automatically adds visual snap shots of them for your readers.

Snap shots home
Snap shots home

Accounts are free and easy to set up. There are only a couple of steps:

Set up page
Set up page
  • choose the colour for your theme
  • add a logo if you have one
  • select the language you want
  • register
  • copy the code automatically generated to your webpage.

The easiest way to add the Snap code to a WordPress page (including Edublogs and Globalteacher) was to:

  • copy the code given
  • go to widgets
  • add ‘text’
  • save
  • edit ‘text’ and paste the code
  • save.

All of the links, whether they be within posts or not, now appear with a snap shot once a mouse is hovered over it. Snap is a tool that is quick and easy to use and add visual appeal to blogs, wikis and websites. It adds visual information for users as they can see what the website belonging to the link looks like before they decide to visit it.

Snap shots are already used by eBay, Amazon, Google, Flickr, photobucket and Wikipedia. If you decide you don’t want to see Snaps on Bright Ideas, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Please note that you can also customise the advertising away from what Snap has selected by going to ‘Snap Shares’ within the Snap site and adding your own blog, wiki, etc. URL. And if you have a lot of links on your page, like Bright Ideas, you may find that Snap takes up too much room.

Voki

Voki is a resource that enables users to create a talking avatar, a fun way to jazz up (dare I say pimp?) your blog.

Voki homepage

Voki homepage

There are lots of avatar types to choose from; people, animals, anime characters and so on. Once you have chosen your avatar, you can change the colour of its hair, its lips, select glasses and so on. You can also select the type of background; holidays, travel, outdoors, sports, nightlife or insert a background from your own picture collection. Voices and accents can be selected if you decide to type your message in via the computer keyboard. Otherwise you can record your own voice via mobile phone or microphone. The Bright Ideas voki took about five minutes to create, have a look here and also at the one on the sidebar.)

Sue Waters has created a post explaining how to add the voki to Edublogs, WordPress or Global teacher. Following her instructions, adding the voki was simple and took about two minutes. Helen Otway also lists interesting ways you can use vokis in the classroom (please note the terms and conditions of Voki; students must be over the age of 13 to sign up for an account):

  1. Students can create avatars that are similar in looks or personalities and record a message that tells about themselves.
  2. Students can exchange these avatars with e-pals either within their own setting or anywhere in the world.
  3. Students can generate questions to ask their avatar e-pals.
  4. ESL (English as a Second Language) students can use the speaking avatars to practice and listen to their speech. They may use the computerised voice first then record their own voice when they feel more comfortable. Writing, reading and pronunciation are all practised.
  5. Students can create an avatar that resembles a character from a story, add a setting and give it speech. The speech could be from the story or a creative point of view (POV) from the character on an event.

Vokis can be a fun way to communicate and the advantage is that students can maintain their anonymity when publishing to the world.

Schoolyard Blitz @ Mooroolbark College

Last year Mooroolbark College teachers Jodie Tilley and Pennie White developed a wonderful WebQuest. This WebQuest was an award winner in the Education Channel (now Connect) and SLAV WebQuests and Beyond 2008 competition.  

Schoolyard Blitz! home
Schoolyard Blitz! home

Jodie explains how the WebQuest came about. ‘The Yarra Valley eLearning Community implemented a 1:2 laptop program for year 7 and 8 in seven schools including Mooroolbark College and was running PD to support the curriculum development needed. I am a maths teacher at Mooroolbark College. I attended a professional development session run by Pennie White on Student Collaborative Projects with an emphasis on WebQuests. Pennie White was a Development Manager for the Yarra Valley eLearning Community and was based at Mooroolbark College at the time. During this session, I became interested in using WebQuests with my class but was pretty disappointed at the lack of Maths WebQuests available. Pennie and I decided to work together to make a Maths WebQuest and this is how ‘Schoolyard Blitz’ was created. Having Pennie as an eLearning Coach in my school enabled this great project to get off the ground. Without the joint expertise and time invested this innovative curriculum would not have come about.’

Task page

Jodie says, ‘I was interested in finding a creative way to teach measurement to my Year 7 students. After brainstorming together we decided that students could design an outdoor area of the school. Pennie thought that Google Sketch-up would be the ideal 3D modelling program that students could use to do this. The best thing about this quality program is that it’s free and comes with video tutorials. This meant that we as teachers did not have to fully know how to use the program ourselves!’

Process page

Process page

Jodie continues, ‘The WebQuest itself presents a scenario to students where they work in teams of three or four to design an outdoor space of the school with a budget of 100,000. Students worked as architects, accountants, designers and computer model creators on this four-week assignment. Students had to measure the dimensions of the physical space. They had to create a scaled drawing on graph paper and develop their design for the space. They had to use the Internet (with a hotlist provided by the WebQuest) to cost the equipment, furniture and materials needed.’  

Assessment page

Evaluation page

Jodie explains, ‘They then used Google Sketch-up to create a virtual 3D model of their design. They had to present their submission using PowerPoint to the rest of the class. I ran this WebQuest with my year seven class with great success. The students were highly motivated and were even seen working on this in their lunchtimes.’

Jodie has also provided a list of VELS Standards addressed in the WebQuest:

  • Strand: Discipline Based – Domain: Mathematics – Dimensions: Number, Measurement, Space and Working Mathematically
  • Strand: Interdisciplinary Learning – Domain: Information and Communication Technology – Dimension: ICT for Creating
  • Strand: Physical, Personal and Social Learning – Domain: Interpersonal Development – Dimension: working and learning in teams

Well done to Jodie and Pennie for creating such an interesting and engaging WebQuest and for winning a Smartboard in the Education Channel (now Connect) and SLAV WebQuests and Beyond 2008 competition. Hopefully this will inspire Victorian educators to submit their Web 2.0 projects to the Connect and SLAV Web 2.0 2009 competition.

Jing update

A previous post looked at the screencasting tool Jing. The people that developed Jing have also developed a tool called ‘Screencast‘. Screencast allows users to record, store and share any content from Jing such as videos, images and presentations.

Screencast homepage

Screencast homepage

Screencast.com has some new information about:

Screencast is free, although there are premium offerings that can cost US$99 pa. The free account includes 2GB storage and 2GB bandwidth per month. Screencasting is a great way to teach others how to use a particular computer resource or Web 2.0 tool.

Siosus

Siosus is a free total online sharing and collaboration workspace.  The free basic package includes unlimited workspaces and unlimited number of members.  

Siosus homepage

Siosus homepage

Tools that are included in the free basic package are useful and extensive:

  • Contacts and group manager
  • Custom workspace
  • Manage your files
  • Calendars and events
  • Blogs
  • Discussions
  • Chat and IM
  • RSS feeds
  • Web database management
  • Project management
  • Task automation
  • Permissioning 
What's included?

What's included

The drawbacks are that there are limits to the free package:

  • Only 25MB free storage
  • Advertising appears on your homepage
  • Only 200 MB monthly transfer
  • 10Mb file size upload limit

 There are three upgrades that increase all of the storage/transfer/upload options and give better support; however they cost from US$15 to US$100 per month.

Upgrade options

Upgrade options

Siosus does appear to be just about the total package when it comes to sharing and collaborating with colleagues who are sitting next to you or on the other side of the world. However, limits will affect the efficacy of the free package. It all depends on how much space you actually need to use.  

Siosus is the platform chosen by James Henri and Sandra Lee to run the Your School Library online conference.

Reading Cafe @ Mill Park Secondary College

Mill Park Secondary College  teacher librarian and ICT Coach Heather Bailie has developed an interesting book blog.

Heather says, ‘The Reading Café  is a site that has been set up directly as a result of the library staff at MPSC completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course. The Reading Cafe is a place for staff to discuss books and reading.  I set this up with a dual purpose:

1.         ‘As a place to consolidate reviews and recommendations for reading by and for staff.  We have many avid readers on staff and we try to cater for their reading, almost as much as the students, particularly through the senior campus fiction collection.  In our busy lives it is not always possible to share our good reading experiences in person- this site aims to provide that experience asynchronously (now there’s a word I’ve only dared use since blogging!)

2.         ‘As a gentle means to encourage other staff to delve into the world of blogs, and, for some, to introduce the concept to them. For many teachers the idea of writing for a blog is totally foreign; they fear the unknown and don’t believe (wrongly) they have the necessary skills.

‘At first there wasn’t a competitive element to this but speaking to an old friend (Melbourne State College 1982!) at a SLAV conference I decided to adopt her idea of a teacher’s reading challenge modelled on the Premier’s Reading Challenge.  I challenged staff to read 6 books by the end of the year, 2 of which must be designated “young adult”.  To record books read they must post a review on the blog or, if that book has been previously reviewed, make a comment on the original post.’

She continues, ‘Initially, to get some content on the site, I encouraged everyone at school who was doing the SLAV Web 2.0 course to post some reviews.  I also selectively invited some other people who I knew would be interested (either from the blogging perspective or as readers) to visit and contribute.  Once we had a body of reviews, about 15, I launched the site at each campus at morning teas hosted by the two campus libraries.  It has certainly generated a lot of interest although perhaps not as much activity as I would like.  I’m starting to hand out some random prizes so there may be more activity soon.  I think that goal 2 has been at least partly achieved – plenty of people look.  I’m very grateful to my wonderful library staff who have enthusiastically posted reviews to the site.  To record people’s progress on the challenge I adopted the SLAV Web 2.0 course idea of using a google spreadsheet  – it is linked from the site.’

Heather says that she will be doing a new year re-launch of the blog shortly. Well done Heather and Mill Park Secondary College staff that have contributed to the blog.

GiggleIT Project

The International Association of School Librarianship has created an innovative and exciting project, GiggleIT.

GiggleIT home

GiggleIT home

From the IASL’s media release:

  • The GiggleIT Project is a global collaborative publishing project hosted by the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL), working in partnership with the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL).
  • Designed to help children around the world improve their English language literacy skills, the GiggleIT Project encourages students ages 10-14 to contribute their writings to an online book (eBook) celebrating stories and humour from their culture. Humour, just like tragedy, is a vehicle that can be used to promote cross-cultural understandings and collaboration for children and young adults around the world. Children’s work will be published internationally and will identify their culture through literature.
  • Written by children for children, the eBook will contain children’s stories, jokes and poetry. The project will inspire children to be creative and make cross-cultural connections with other children from around the world as they learn about humour from other countries, while improving their literacy skills. 
  • A range of competitions, and teaching and learning packages, will motivate and stimulate reading and writing skills whilst supporting the teaching and learning with examples and worksheets which can be downloaded into handouts for the class.

Registration is free. GiggleIT sounds like a fantastic way for students to improve their literacy, have fun and collaborate with other students.